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rdoskocil 's review for:
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
I always feel a bit guilty giving a classic novel a middling rating, and maybe a bit embarrassed, as if I’ve missed something important. As a snapshot of the Lost Generation it’s an interesting one. The sense of living without purpose carries a heavy weight, as does the cultural relativism and the search for love. Hemingway is also a keen writer of snappy, witty dialogue that likely made many readers of the era squirm. I can get behind that. I can also get behind his vivid descriptions and details, which make the era and settings come alive.
As a story, though, it’s nothing more than a slice of life piece. The characters don’t grow, nothing is gained or learned, and nothing resolved. There is no fundamental story. In a nutshell, it’s a novel about people flitting between hotels and bars, getting drunk, arguing, and repeating the process. There is fishing. There are bulls. The rest is stripped of emotion, almost to a sociopathic point. It does do plenty to make us despise the characters. They’re intolerant, anti-Semitic, classist, homophobic, and alcoholic. Do we care what happens to them? Not really.
I can see this book for what it is, and respect it as a product of its era, but I’m not sure I care for it much beyond that. Sorry, Hemingway fans. I can’t rally behind this one with you.
As a story, though, it’s nothing more than a slice of life piece. The characters don’t grow, nothing is gained or learned, and nothing resolved. There is no fundamental story. In a nutshell, it’s a novel about people flitting between hotels and bars, getting drunk, arguing, and repeating the process. There is fishing. There are bulls. The rest is stripped of emotion, almost to a sociopathic point. It does do plenty to make us despise the characters. They’re intolerant, anti-Semitic, classist, homophobic, and alcoholic. Do we care what happens to them? Not really.
I can see this book for what it is, and respect it as a product of its era, but I’m not sure I care for it much beyond that. Sorry, Hemingway fans. I can’t rally behind this one with you.